The Yellow House

And now for a purely gratuitous photo of my squash blossoms. They’re gorgeous and verdant and settling in for the heat of July and August. The first yellow crookneck is almost—ready—to pick!—and then I think summer vegetable fever will officially set in.

I’m sorry if there’s nothing around here for the next month or so but tomatoes and summer squash and shelling beans and cucumbers. Not really, though. Besides, we need to give that little tomato icon in the corner a reason to be here.

Looking back on a few months of The Yellow House, I’m starting to realize that the life I portray here is one where I spend my days traipsing around farmers’ markets, puttering in my little garden, meditating on baking, throwing dinner parties where everyone drinks too much wine, and then documenting it all with excessive parentheticals, too much strikethrough, extra-long sentences, and mediocre photos.

I mean, I actually do all of those things.

It’s just that all the traipsings and putterings and meditations and dinner-partyings are only the tip of the iceberg. The majority of my time is spent at a Serious Job where I work 9 to 5 (or, more unofficially and far too often, 7 to 7). I guess that “traipsing” is just more poetic to write about than “sitting in my rolling chair in my office” (although it was really exciting when I got to switch from a stationary chair to a wheeled one—but I’ll save that story for another day, you lucky reader).

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As I write this, I’m keeping vigil on the back deck. Every once in awhile, I venture from the glow of the laptop screen and descend the three stairs down into my little city garden, and peer down at two dishes full of beer nestled in a cluster of greens.

I should explain. About a month ago, I checked on my fledgling collard greens, which up until that point had been the most verdant, happy plants in the garden. Overnight, the biggest leaves had been turned to lace—-munched away so that only the veins of the leaves remained. The next morning, two more leaves gone. And again, the following morning. After some desperate consultation with the garden experts (Louise and…Google), I was pretty sure I had a slug problem.

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I should start this off by admitting that I’m not a “crêpe person”. You know who you are, crêpe people. Crêpes were your favorite street food in France, and you’re already a little annoyed with me for calling a buckwheat crêpe a crêpe at all, because everyone knows that in France, buckwheat crêpes are called galettes. (I myself, despite David Lebovitz‘s best efforts to educate me, did not know until after I had already made these.)

So, I’m sorry in advance, devoted crêpe people. I didn’t even really set out to make these crêpes very purposefully. Instead, they were the result of having too much of several ingredients–eggs, milk, and a lot of herbs.

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